Death Rates Higher In Deprived Areas

15 July 2014, 06:00

Children in the most deprived areas of Wales are almost twice as likely to die than those in more affluent areas. Research by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) shows there are a number of factors. They include children being born to young parents and growing up in households where people smoke.

The organisation has now made several recommendations to the Welsh Government to help tackle the problem. It wants all schools to provide high quality sex education, as well as teaching the importance of health behaviours during pregnancy. There are also calls for Public Health Wales to continue working with Local Health Boards to monitor new national and local targets for reducing smoking rates across all stages of pregnancy and early parenthood.

The Welsh Government has released a statement. It said:

"This report demonstrates the diversity of policy areas impacting on child death rates and shows that all public services have a role to play in reducing child deaths. We have a number of policies and programmes across government already in place to address some of the issues raised by this report, and we will work with the RCPCH in Wales in considering the detail of their recommendations to consider what else we can do."